Business News: Oktober 2012

Rabu, 31 Oktober 2012

How Badly Do Windows 8 And RT Need Dedicated Apps?

As Microsoft hosts thousands of app developers in Redmond for its BUILD developers conference, the question needs to be raised: How badly does Microsoft need dedicated apps? More specifically, how badly does Microsoft need apps for Windows RT?

Microsoft almost certainly needs dedcated Windows 8 and Windows RT very very badly. But there is an alternative. Microsoft hasn't really suggested this yet, but the Web could be its backup plan.

How Many Windows Store Apps Are There?

Microsoft seems to be going all out to convince developers that yes, they need to develop apps for the Windows platform. But Microsoft executives didn't reveal Tuesday how many apps are actually available for Windows 8 and Windows RT, the same omission that Windows chief Steven Sinofsky made at the formal launch of Windows 8. Then, Sinofsky made the claim that the Windows Store would launch with more apps than any competing apps store contained at its opening. But, with the Windows Store open, Microsoft still hasn't said how many apps are there. (Some have suggested that there are as few as 5,000.)

Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer did, however, say that Microsoft has sold four million Windows 8 licenses to consumers over the last three days, along with tens of millions more to businesses. It's a good start, but still a small fraction of the installed base of 670 million PCs running Windows 7 that could upgrade to Windows 8.

Different App Needs For Different Windows Platforms?

Microsoft has made the case, over and over, that its hardware and services traverse a continuum of devices, from the desktop to the notebook to the tablet to the phone to the living room. The operating systems that run these devices share common elements and, in some cases, common code; the user interfaces that they all run share a number of common elements. But the attitude toward apps on each platform has differed.

Take Windows Phone. At the Windows Phone 8 launch on Monday, Joe Belfiore, the vice president responsible for Windows Phone, said that the Windows Phone app ecosystem now includes 120,000 apps across 191 countries, including 46 of the top 50 most heavily used apps on other platforms. 'That's huge progress for us,' Belfiore said.

On Tuesday, Microsoft also delivered its Windows Phone 8 software development kit, a real boost for developers hoping to add apps to the Windows Phone 8 platform. A free version of Visual Studio Express 2012 was also released.

At BUILD, Ballmer identified Windows 8 apps like ESPN, which built out a side-scrolling Metro app that offers access to video highlights and podcasts, analysis and additional content, all done within the Metro interface. SAP will offer a Windows 8 app; Twitter will too, along with Dropbox, although those latter apps have yet to be released.

'In case it's not clear: we're all in for Windows 8,' Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer said at the BUILD conference on Monday. (That comes as consumers remain unsure about the new OS, often preferring Windows 7 or even XP over Windows 8.)

And Ballmer was his typical enthusiastic self.

Is Windows Really The Best Choice For Developers?

'Microsoft's Windows 8 is the best opportunity for software developers today,' Ballmer told developers. 'Hundreds of millions of people just aching to use your applications, just dying to buy your application. Just dying to become involved with your company on a live, active, searchable basis. I know the folks in this room must be interested, or you wouldn't be here. But I guarantee that this will be the best opportunity software developers will see as hundreds of millions of machines go out with the potential of billions and billions of new applications being sold. So i really want us to build together. We need your support. We need your commitment. You can count on us to stand behind the product and deliver whatever we can from you to from a developer support perspective.'

But should Microsoft worry that much about the app count? After all, Windows 8 has a whole legacy of Windows 7 apps to build on; even if they don't necessarily look all Metro-sexual, they at least work. Under the old desktop UI, they should even appear relatively natural. Games, for example, have their own UI, their own fonts, and a legacy of keyboard and mouse controllers (although more support gamepads, as well).

The answer, naturally, is no: Relying too much on Windows 7-style apps lessens the need for customers to upgrade to Windows 8. And developers won't inevitably gravitate to Windows, like they did just a few years ago: Apple and Google's own developer ecosystems beckon. Microsoft's developer terms are generous: developers keep 70% of all revenues, and when an app achieves $25,000 in revenue, that jumps to 80%. But Apple announced this month that it has paid $6.5 billion in cumulative payments to developers. That's nothing to sneeze at.

Why Windows RT Is Different

I'd suggest, though, that, Windows RT might be a different story.

Say what you will about Windows RT, one of the key stories surrounding the platform is the lack of third-party apps. Analysts have said that before you make a decision to buy a Windows 8 tablet - and right now, customers seem to prefer the Surface - you'll need to decide whether or not Windows RT offers the apps you want.

Websites As RT Apps?

But the notion of apps also brings with it the prejudice that users actually require a dedicated app. Recall the early days of Apple's iOS: 'apps' by major media partners were often just links to websites, some mobile-formatted, others not even that. The number of media players who have announced 'apps' for Windows 8 makes me assume at least some are headed in that direction.

But the message behind 'apps' like Contre Jour from earlier this year suggests that a well-designed website might be at least a stopgap to any perceived app woes. Recall that Microsoft's IE10 implementation of Contre Jour eliminates all the navigation tools or scroll bars, taking the HTML5-designed website 'out of the browser' and onto the desktop.

That doesn't mean HTML5 is necessarily the right long-term solution from a technical sense; after all, Facebook's mobile site for iOS recently ditched HTML5 to go native, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has already indicated that a native Android app is in the works, too. It's also true that apps like Contre Jour don't magically spring into being, but require their own development.

What I am surprised that I haven't seen yet is Microsoft playing up its 'Beauty of the Web' message to encourage developers to craft Contre Jour-style Web experiences or at least IE10-styled, Metro-ized versions of their websites. And, of course, users can pin websites to Windows 8's Start screen, giving them the same status and appearance as an app. It seems like a natural evolution of the company's messaging.

Over the past few months, I've worked almost exclusively on the Web itself, via the Google Chromebox. Web apps provide a number of alternatives for traditional apps; you just need to look.

I'm not sure I'm ready for a Metro-ized Web. But if the apps pressure grows too strong, I wouldn't be surprised for Microsoft to make the case that the Web already offers millions of great Windows 8 and Windows RT "apps."

We Need Apple And Google To Work Together Again

On Tuesday, Apple's iMessage service went down. Again. For the second time this week. Last week, when the amazing new Atebits iOS game, Letterpress, came out, Game Center collapsed in a heap, making the game nearly unplayable. If Apple insists on being a a service provider, not just a device maker, it had better get its act together.

Apple's new, in-house Maps are mostly okay in the U.S., but they are unusable elsewhere. Siri, the artificially intelligent assistant, has a remarkably hard time understanding some seemingly simple requests. And don't even get me started on iCloud syncing.

Can't We All Just Get Along?

There's a common thread here. The most painful of these networking problems are in areas in which Google excels. Apple used to let Google provide some of them, most notably Maps, but not anymore. The two companies are barely on speaking terms now. They're both trying to do it all themselves, and neither one really can.

Many heavy Google users are happy with Android, which offers the best possible experience for Google's excellent cloud-backed services. But let's be brutally honest about this: Google's not making money on Android - without the help of some really fancy accounting. It's not sustainable. And for all the money and effort it's putting in, the hardware experience is still not as good as the iPhone. Google's partners, working on their own thin margins, can't make a mobile device as good as Apple can.

And in the areas where Google can still operate in the clear on Apple's devices, it's making awesome experiences. After months of unexplained delays on Apple's side (naturally), Google's updated iOS Search app answers natural-language questions almost instantly, like the computer from Star Trek.

It's way faster than Siri for this stuff. But Siri goes out of her way to avoid asking Google any questions, using non-Google partners like Yelp instead. All of this is anecdotal, but I'm a die-hard Apple user, and I'm much more confident in Google's results. Now that Google Search is out, I'll use Siri much less for anything that involves search. Is it any wonder that Apple took its sweet time approving this app?

Users are getting the short end of the stick on both sides of this Silicon Valley Stand-Off. Apple, Google, come on. It's not worth the effort to keep squabbling like this.

I want Google to invent the self-driving car, but I want Apple to design the car. How awesome would that be? But it'll never happen unless these companies get over their B.S. and start acting in their users' best interests.

Lead image courtesy of Google's April Fools' Day joke

Top 10 Tech Nightmares To Scare You This Halloween

Halloween is the spookiest time of the year. Here at ReadWrite, we couldn't help but think of tech-based nightmares. And we couldn't help but share them...

Google combines everything it knows about you from all its various services - and then uses it to blackmail you over your insipid kitten photos and lame taste in music.
Gray Goo - nanobots running out of control and destroying everything. Or on a larger scale, your 3D printer starts making copies of itself. Which start making copies of themselves'
You buy a brand new tablet, and the next day a new model comes out and makes yours obsolete. And makes you feel like a sucker.
Now that Disney is buying LucasFilm, Jar Jar Binks shows up in every new Disney movie.
Being the first person to die in an accident caused by a self-driving car.
Stuxnet decides to invade your smartphone.
Not being able to catch your brand new fancy Nikon SLR when experimenting with Camera Toss Photography.
You wake up from a dream, and you really are CEO of RIM.
You get arrested for jailbreaking your iPad.
Your startup gets bought for millions in stock - but it turns out to be Zynga stock.

Thanks to Jon Mitchell, Jim Nash, and Christina Ortiz for their terrifying contributions. And we all want to know, what are YOU afraid of today?

Besides this, of course:

Selasa, 30 Oktober 2012

ReadWrite DeathWatch: Feature Phones

If it's not a smartphone, it's dumb. Despite current global dominance, basic "feature phones" will give up the ghost in just a few years.

The Basics

After the Blackberry and then the iPhone created the "smartphone" category, we needed to call the rest of our cellphones something, and "dumbphones" sounded, well, dumb. Thus was born the "feature phone."

While some initially viewed feature phones as an in-between category describing something more than a basic mobile device and less than a full-powered smartphone, the term has generally come to represent everything south of the portable computer-as-cellphone Apple/Android/Windows/Blackberry kinds of devices that get all the media attention. There's still some disagreement, but for the sake of this post, we're talking about anything "non-smart."

In the U.S., we most frequently associate feature phones with cheap prepaid plans and stubborn parents who refuse to upgrade, but in the majority of the world, low-tech (and low priced) remains king. According to Gartner, more than 63% of mobile devices sold in the second quarter of 2012 were feature phones.

Cost is the main reason, followed by durability. In countries without massive carrier subsidies of handsets, both advantages are magnified. And feature phones are also generally better at being, well, phones. If you spend a lot of time actually talking, aclamshell phone feels a lot more natural than squishing a Galaxy Note II up to your cheek.

They're cheap, they're durable, and they work. So why are they on the Deathwatch?

For starters, they've peaked. Feature phones are quickly losing ground to their cleverer cousins. According to that Gartner report, while overall mobile phone device sales were actually down in Q2, smartphone sales jumped 42.7%. While smartphones currently account for only 21% of handsets in the Middle East and Africa, they're on pace to break 50% in just two2 years. In Southeast Asia, smartphones are currently outsold 3-to-1, but sales are growing at 78% per year.

The Problem

Durable, cheap phones that don't use expensive data don't add up to a very good business. The last thing anyone on the sell side wants is users who talk on their cellphones ' and do little else.

Feature phones leave little room beyond ringtones and text messaging for up-sells. Without apps and zippy interfaces for accessing them, theres little differentiation, no long-term platform lock-in and almost no carrier value. That's why Motorola recently joined Sony in winding down feature phone production. (In the short term, that helps Nokia, which is seeing modest growth in feature phone sales, but even it knows the money's in Windows.)

It's not all a supply issue. There's also legitimate demand for smartphones. In the developing world, mobile networks are often the most reliable form of Internet access, and having a phone that can take advantage of those networks is often critical. In the U.S. and Europe, the spread of social networks is helping drive smartphone adoption. And with the cheapest 4G prepaid phones dropping below $100, there's little reason to settle for an old-fashioned burner.

The Prognosis

Mass adoption of smartphones continues to drive down component costs, making feature phones even less attractive. By 2020 - eve

n sooner in richer areas - you'll be hard pressed to find them on the street. Within a few years, the TracFone racks at Wal-Mart will be full of low-end and mid-range Android smartphones.

Can This Technology Be Saved?

There will always be a small market for stripped-down phones, particularly in the industrial sector, where rugged design and reliable voice calls trump gesture-aware touchscreens and consumer-friendly glitter. Think Nextel. Still, the clamshells-of-the-future will probably come packed with high-end features, and the average consumer will walk straight past them to the fun stuff.

Previous ReadWrite Technology Deathwatches

One Laptop Per Child (OLPC): No change

In-House Data Centers: No change

Point-and-Shoot Cameras: No change

Video Game Consoles: The utility of bundles apps like Netflix and Vudu seems to be slipping. An NPD Study showed that one in five consumers who view streaming video on their TVs do so without a peripheral device.

Blu-Ray: The same NPD study reveals that "online video is maturing' as users migrate to watching streaming media on their TVs.

QR Codes: It's been a mixed bag. While Bank of America is testing QR codes for mobile payments (good news for the technology), a security researcher demonstrated how a malicious QR code could be used to wipe a Samsung smartphone.

Company Deathwatches

For an update on ReadWrite's baker's dozen of company Deathwatches, check out our updated ReadWriteWeb DeathWatch Update: The Unlucky 13.

Smartphone/feature phone image from Boost Mobile.

Steve Jobs' New Yacht And Other Secret Projects Revealed

"I know that it's possible I will die and leave Laurene with a half-built boat. But I have to keep going on it. If I don't, it's an admission that I'm about to die."

Steve Jobs on the then-uncompleted yacht in his biography by Walter Isaccson.

Like Tupac's hologram at the Coachella music festival, and the CGI generated likeness of Elvis appearing in Coca-Cola commercials, the ghosts of past giants still walk among us.

Perhaps none more than Steve Jobs, the visionary co-founder of Apple. When Jobs passed away in October 2011 he left a slew of unfinished secret projects that never saw the light of day. Now, a year after his death, one of his most personal visions has been completed.

It's called the Venus, and it's a 260-foot yacht, a minimalist design that Jobs conceived and that his biographer Walter Isaacson described as an "obsession" for the Apple co-founder.

True to his singular vision, the Venus is a floating Apple device, with seven 27-inch iMacs on board, sleek like a floating piece of hardware, a vertiable Air Force One for the tech giant, albeit one he never got to play with.

The vessel is made of lightweight aluminum and a special glass conceived by Apple engineers. The ship was built by a Dutch manufacturer with the interior done by renowned designer Philippe Starck.

As a token of appreciation for the completed project, yesterday Jobs's widow and three of their children were on hand for the yacht's formal launch in the Netherlands. As a token of appreciation, Jobs's family gave custom iPods and wrote personal thank you notes to everyone who worked on the yacht (see what I mean here). Details about the vessel's price or what the family plans to do with it are as yet unknown.

Here's a video look at the Venus's launch via the Dutch blog One More Thing:

Secret Projects

Jobs's yacht wasn't the only secret project he was working on. Another project was Apple University, an executive training program to mold employees into thinking like the enigmatic Jobs. In 2008, Jobs accelerated his vision after his second medical leave and hired Joel Podolny, the dean of Yale University's School of Management who left that post suddenly to lead the push in Cupertino.

The project was closely guarded and said to mirror in structure Jobs's other company Pixar, which developed a Pixar University training program.

The basic idea behind Apple U was to impart Jobs's thinking to Apple's worker bees so they could keep his vision alive after he was gone. Jobs even developed university level courses to teach the business principles that helped him lead the tech behemoth.

It's unclear where the project is now, but it appears Podolny is still with Apple as of this July and an "Inside Apple Recruitment" video.

Apple's Headquarters

Another dream of Jobs was to create a futuristic spaceship like Cupertino facility on the grounds of the old Hewlett-Packard headquarters. Jobs made his last public appearance (against his doctor's wishes) to pitch this idea to the Cupertino city council.

The plan calls for a giant new Apple complex on the site of HP's old space where Jobs worked part-time at the age of 13. A 2.8-million-square-foot building that resembled a metallic dome with natural light, the design put 12,000 people in one building, taking the idea of an office park to a while new level. The Cupertino city council approved the project while trying to strongarm him to open an Apple Store in the city, which Jobs coyly declined. The project is supposed to be completed in 2015.

Here is Jobs presenting to the Cupertino city council in June of 2011:

Photo courtesy of Bas van der Ploeg

Hurricane Sandy Rewrites The Script On Google's Nexus News

The launch event for Google's new Nexus 4 phone and Nexus 10 tablet was supposed to be in New York. That was canceled at the last minute, thanks to Hurricane Sandy. So instead, Google announced the devices in a blog post Monday morning. Isn't it a pain when real life messes up your carefully scripted tech news?

After the Google blog post revealed the new gadgets, journalists got hurried group walkthroughs and some hands-on time at Google's San Francisco headquarters. Some reporters expressed frustration to me that this launch was 'botched,' unwilling to let it slide for, you know, an act of God.

This is a pretty exciting launch from Google, and I don't want to act like it doesn't deserve some attention. The Nexus 10 is the first 10-inch Android tablet worth a damn, and the Nexus 4 is a blazingly fast phone with a great screen, camera, and overall feel. Android 4.2 has some enticing new features.

Android is a real tablet OS now. It has multi-user support, which I sure wish Apple's OS had. 'Tablets with a large display are devices meant to be shared,' said Hugo Barra, Google's director of product management for Android. And it's true.

The Nexus 4 boasts this awesome new Photo Sphere mode, which lets you create full 360-degree views of the space all around you, just like in Google Street View. You can even submit your Photo Spheres to Google Maps for actual inclusion in Street View. That's such a cool idea, and it's a win-win for Google and for users.

But the whole thing felt perfunctory and uncomfortable, given what was happening on the East Coast. 'Glad we're not in New York,' joked a prominent tech reporter as we all headed into the room. Everybody laughed, and I couldn't tell how much journo cynicism was infused in it. The PR people were haggard. They had been in NYC preparing for the event, and the game plan was changed on them due to the weather. What a bummer.

But the PR machinery of the tech news world keeps cranking. We're still not allowed to post full reviews until the embargo is lifted Friday morning. Monday was a day full of real news, the kind where people get hurt, cities get flooded, and history gets made. This kind of natural disaster news will only get more intense. But some people were still preoccupied, thinking about new tablets and phones.

Senin, 29 Oktober 2012

What's Behind The Public Shaming of Reddit's King Troll Violentacrez?

When Gawker reporter Adrian Chen publicly outed troll and influential Reddit user Violentacrez as Michael Brutsch two weeks ago in what many are calling the "best story of the Web," he changed the nature of the Internet forever. The resulting journalist-sanctioned public shaming:

1. Highlighted how ignorant the media is of Internet culture.

2. Forced the Internet's core psyche, sometimes referred to as the "hive mind," to mature from a teenage boy to a relatively respectful young adult almost overnight.

3. Legitimized digital lynch mobs.

The Seduction Of A Public Shaming

Our technology may have evolved, but our attitudes have not: Nothing pleases humanity more than a good public shaming. Instead of pelting rotten tomatoes at a man locked in the town square stockade, society's "sinners" are now paraded on national television, courtesy of Anderson Cooper, and branded with a scarlet 'T." (Just Google "Michael Brutsch" if you don't know what I mean.)

Brutsch is now the physical face of the most hated thing on the Internet: the Troll. That anonymous person who goes out of his way to provoke a response. While few people understand what trolls actually are, where they came from and why they do what they do, it is generally accepted that they are the scum of the Web. Hating on them unconditionally is not just acceptable, it's encouraged, as Cooper implied by calling Brutsch a sad 'little person,' sitting 'alone in his room, typing on his keyboard, interacting with people he doesn't even know.' Cooper did stop short of calling him a 'neckbeard,' but other outlets have not - he's been called a "monster," and even falsely tied to the suicide of Amanda Todd and the "capper" community.

Brutsch didn't create the act of trolling, nor was he the original or most notorious troll. (Brutsch might not even be a troll, as tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin pointed out.) Nor is Brutsch the first man to have an offensive porn collection, or the first man to sexualize children. Regardless, Brutsch will be made an example of, dammit, because we the media (or as Forbes Kashmir Hill called it, 'The Internet Cool Kids') are sick and tired of these vile human beings mucking up our Internet! Never mind that the same media leverages these same transgressors to drive pageviews - all cloaked in hand-wringing and faux outrage (an act Reddit itself is guilty of) . And, of course, the same said media also sexualizes children.

Trolls Are Easy Targets

Calling Brutsch's transgressions 'vile' isn't an overstatement - his stuff was downright disgusting. Brutsch had his hands in some of the most controversial subreddits, including /r/incest, /r/misogyny, /r/beatingwomen, /r/chokeabitch, /r/Jewmerica, /r/Jailbait, /r/niggerjailbait, /r/rapebait, /r/picsofdeadkids and /r/creepshots, just to name a few. If you are offended by those titles, that's the point of a Troll: Brutsch's online behavior is so offensive that anyone that wants to be considered a respectable member of society has no choice but to oppose his behavior.

As Chen describes trolling in his unmasking piece: 'A troll exploits social dynamics like computer hackers exploit security loopholes, and Violentacrez calmly exploited the Reddit hive mind's powerful outrage machine and free speech values at the same time.' If 'troll' wasn't the hot button word of the year, we'd be calling Brutsch's digital binders of scantily clad or beaten women 'performance art.'

Whitney Phillips, a scholar studying Internet trolling culture, put it another way, calling trolls 'cultural scavengers' that 'engage in a process I describe as cultural digestion: They take in, regurgitate, and subsequently weaponize existing tropes and cultural sensitivities.' Trolls don't engage in this sort of behavior alone or in a vacuum, Phillips said. Rather, they come out to play when they have a supportive 'host culture.'

AKA: Reddit.

Enabling Adolescent Behavior

This is exactly what Brutsch meant when he told CNN's Drew Griffin that Reddit 'enabled' and 'encouraged' his online behavior: 'When two years ago, when all of this was at its height, the audience was appreciative, and supportive of the sort of gallows humor that I put out there.' When Brutsch, who is one year shy of 50, said he was catering to an audience of college kids, he means this both literally and figuratively. Brutsch's fanbase isn't necessarily college-aged, but the core Internet psyche is.

Established sometime between late 1993 and 1999 through sites like Usenet and WebCrawler, and then reborn in 2003 with the creation of 4chan, the Internet psyche is skeptical, self-absorbed, sadistic and lazy - except when it comes to porn, cute animals, digital pranks and acts of Internet vigilantism. For various reasons, perhaps elated to being wealthy, white and privileged, users connected to this hive mind regularly post the most disturbing (re: misogynist, racist) content they can find. You might see this behavior as a way to compensate for, and feel alive in, their mundane real-world existences.

The infamous Usenet troll Ted Frank told Stryker in an interview for his book Epic Win For Anonymous: How 4chan's Army Conquered The Web, that trolling served as 'an educational tool for newcomers.' Modern trolling culture has evolved from its roots on Usenet, however, and Frank 'insists' the trolling similarities between 4chan and Usenet are 'an etymological coincidence.' (In fact, the notion of trolling can be traced back even further than Usenet: Stryker describes comedian Andy Kaufman as one of the finest examples of a 'pre-Internet troll,' and draws parallels with the 'Greek prankster Pan, the Norse god Loki, and the conniving Native American Coyote.')

As the Internet goes mainstream and effectively kills the mantra "there are no girls on the Internet," older generations, women and traditional media increasingly bump into this hive mind. Their presence will age and mature the digitial pysche just by being there, is the hope.

The 4Chan Connection

Much of Reddit's young, trolling psyche comes from 4chan, specifically /b/, but 4chan has managed to stay out of headlines during this flame war. 'I don't understand why everyone was upset at jailbait, while 4chan continually posts bullshit across the internet and no one bats an eye,' wrote redditor he_cried_out_WTF in response to the Violentacrez controversy. '4chan is apparently the petulant child that everyone pretends doesn't exist as it throws yet another vase on the floor.'

Reddit (and 4chan) aren't the only social news sites that regularly tap into the vase-throwing Internet psyche: Digg, 9gag, Fark, Something Awful, Encyclopedia Dramatica, Buzzfeed, The Daily Dot, Know Your Meme and the entire I Can Haz Cheezburger clan regularly regularly tune in. Even Erik Martin and fellow paid Reddit employees were guilty of listening to this psyche when they cried 'free speech' and 'privacy' as knee-jerk reactions, when they could have denounced the misogynistic and racist behavior Brutsch catered to.

Brutsch gave the community exactly what it wanted. In return, he heaped up 'meaningless Internet points... It had a reward, like the monkey that pushes the button to get a food pellet, it's addictive' said Brutsch on national television. 'Why do people spend money playing [World of Warcraft], why do people play games like that to build up their meaningless stats?, [it's] exactly the same as 800,000 karma on Reddit.' Gamification, baby.

Where Do The Rest Of Us Fit In?

Our reaction, as both journalists and "respectable members of society" prove we're not that different from Brutsch and the dark side of the Internet. We behaved trollishly when we celebrated his job loss, demanded he be imprisoned or burn in hell, and gleefully discussed how his life is now ruined forever. Our collective outrage - what trolls eat for breakfast - also earned us meaningless Internet points in the form of Facebook likes and Twitter RTs. Chen's piece made White Knights of us all, but is that enough to fix all the societal ills Brutsch was pointing out with his "trolling?" And is a digital lynching really the way to go?

We don't accept this kind of treatment of criminals in the real world - our current justice system is not ruled by a mob mentality - but Chen's piece and the resulting digital lynching is generally viewed as an acceptable means of punishment online.

Perhaps, though, the most ironic aspect of this journalist-sanctioned public trial and execution, is that it generated from well-known Reddit "trolls" themselves.

ReadWrite Survey: Consumers Like Windows 8 & Surface, But Prefer Windows 7

A survey of 2,000 Internet users say they're impressed with Microsoft's Windows 8 and Surface tablet - but they still like Windows 7 even more.

In fact, according to a poll conducted by Toluna QuickSurveys for ReadWrite, users even prefer Windows XP over Windows 8. With that said, more users indicate that they'll upgrade to Windows 8 than not, and the numbers of those saying they would buy new Windows 8 hardware outweighed those that said they were not likely to do.

Not Scientific - But Useful Data Points

Toluna doesn't claim that the results are scientific, and the findings shouldn't be considered a guarantee of the projected outcomes. Still, the survey represents one of the few early data points that indicate the success of Microsoft's latest offerings into the consumer market.

RW asked six questions following the launch of Windows 8, trying to determine how, or if, consumers planned to shop for Windows 8 tablets and software over the short term. We also asked if consumers found the Windows 8 'Metro' interface confusing.

Unfortunately, we don't know how many of those respondents have actually used Windows 8, although the number would probably be insignificant. Therefore, the survey is probably most telling from the perspective of the pre-release information Microsoft has released on Windows 8 and Surface, via its blogs as well as the press, plus its billion-dollar marketing blitz.

(If you're having problems viewing the graphics, try hitting CTRL+-, or CRTL-"dash" to shrink the font and make the images bigger.)

Clearly, those who own a Windows PC plan to upgrade it to Windows 8. Note that, at least according to the poll, the majority of users run Windows. One trend that you'll see consistently throughout the poll, however, is that there are still a great number of undecided consumers, meaning that both Apple, Microsoft, and other vendors have a chance to attract these customers.

Again, good news for Microsoft and for PC makers in general. Again, it's hard to know how many purchases this will translate into, but the radical new touchscreen PCs and tablets are tempting consumers to open their wallets.

This was one of the controversial questions. Is Windows 8's interface confusing? Users who downloaded and used the preview version undoubtedly became more familiar with it, jumping back and forth between the live tiles and the more traditional desktop. Here, the results seem to indicate that more users than not find it confusing, although Toluna garbled the response format.

However, the numbers are still there, just not organized into a bar graph. Conclusion is that substantially more people than not consider the Metro interface confusing.

A nice win for Windows, but look which direction the data is skewing. Towards Windows RT? No, clearly not. Instead, Windows 8 appears to be dominating sentiment, pulling purchasing sentiment away from the iPad and Android tablets, of those who indicated that they plan to purchase. So many more, however, don't plan to upgrade or buy a new tablet. Based on the market, that means that they don't plan to buy a tablet. Another interpretation is that they already own an iPad and are happy with it.

One of the more interesting results in our mini-survey. The majority of respondents are either not sure or don't plan to buy a tablet. But for those that do, the poll is breaking toward the Surface with Windows 8, not Windows RT. And this poll was taken on Thursday, the day of the announcement. While Thursday night's lines indicate a strong response for the Surface RT, a number of you are likely holding out for the full-fledged Windows 8 version.

It's also bad news for other OEMs that plan to release a Windows tablet. Personally, I would have expected most respondents would buy a third-party notebook or tablet, but maybe the Surface is just the product to beat at the moment. Certainly, from a volume perspective, it has the most reviews.

What's surprising here isn't that Windows 7 and Windows 8 are the preferred operating systems, it's that there's such a preference for Windows XP, now over 11 years old. And while an expressed preference for Windows 7 over Windows 8 isn't that surprising, that Windows XP would top Windows 7 is.

Methodology

Again, this study shouldn't be considered scientific. Here's the methodology: The survey was conducted online within the United States on October 25, 2012 among 2000 adults aged 18 and over, selected from among those who have agreed to participate in Toluna QuickSurveys.

Figures for age, sex, and region were weighted where necessary to bring them into line with their actual proportions in the population. Because the sample is based on those who agreed to participate in Toluna surveys, no estimates of theoretical sampling error can be calculated, the company said.

Survey respondents were about equally divided between the 18-34, 35-54, and 55+ age groups. Over 50 percent of the survey responders had had at least some university background. More women (63 percent) than men answered the poll, compared to 50.8 percent of the U.S. population who are female.

One more time: we didn't set out to scientifically determine how Windows 8 or the Surface would fare. But until we have the first sales numbers back in a few weeks or months, this is one of the data points we have to go on. And so far, it looks like Windows 8 is on the road to success. The success of the individual Surface versions, however, could be a more interesting story.

Are Radial Menus The Future Of Office?

Friday, Microsoft launched two of its first apps truly optimized for touch and Windows 8, including the first use of its 'radial menu' for Microsoft OneNote.

Both OneNote and Lync are available in the Windows Store, Microsoft said Friday in a blog post. While Windows RT includes OneNote, it does not include Lync. On the other hand, Microsoft has confirmed that people can download Lync from the Microsoft Store, and use it on Windows RT tablets, including the newly released Surface with Windows RT.

Microsoft has said the Windows RT tablets would receive a 'final' version of Office soon, which is actually available via Windows Update as an optional update. That update should automatically download after a day or so, although people can also manually download it, as well.

Technically, all versions of Office, including the preview version that's built into Windows RT, have been retrofitted for touch. While both OneNote and Lync were designed to work well with mouse or keyboard, they were specifically redesigned to take advantage of touch, Microsoft said, a subtle difference.

In Outlook, for example, a feature called Touch Mode is turned on by default in 'properly configured tablets,' Microsoft said this summer. This increases the size of the Quick Access Toolbar and Ribbon tabs, adds spacing around small buttons in the Ribbon, increases the height of the status bar, turns on the Outlook touch triage action bar and adds space to expanded folders in Outlook, said Gray Knowlton, principal group program manager within the Office unit, in a blog post.

OneNote, however, tries something new: a radial menu that orients the commands around the user, rather than making him or her negotiate the legacy drop-down menus that populate the remainder of the new Office.

What is the Radial Menu?

When creating the new Office, Microsoft said that designers tried to accommodate different input methods.

'For example, a physical keyboard is optimal for large amounts of typing (still significantly faster than an on-screen keyboard for most people),' wrote Knowlton in a blog post in July. 'A mouse is optimal for precise targeting, and touch is great for broad strokes such as scrolling and zooming. In some postures, such as standing, touch is the preferred input, while the efficiency of typing at a desk is hard to beat. Each posture and input characteristic is great for some jobs and not as good for others. We wanted to make sure Office apps felt intuitive, natural and comfortable as across different postures and different kinds of input.'

However, Office for Windows 8 and RT takes a couple different approaches to touch, rather than one unified interface. he said this summer, for example, that Lync and OneNote would automatically invoke the software keyboard, for example, while the other desktop apps would use new specialized APIs. The APIs push content out of the way, so that the virtual keyboard doesn't cover what you type. Office also saves your popular document locations across devices, so that you don't have to negotiate document menus.

But the most intriguing element is the radial menu, which can be manually invoked. As the name suggests, the radial menu allows you to swipe, rather than tap, outward in a circle: instead of tapping a command to bold text, for example, you swipe right.

Continuing the swipe outwards brings up second-level commands. It's a bit different than the so-called MiniBar, a rectangular menu that accompanies frequently used commands in Word, for example. The two are quite similar, except that Minibar requires a tap, while the radial menu uses a swipe. That actually might make a difference in a jouncing train, where commuters are holding the Surface on either side.

In a way, OneNote and Lync are a bit like specialized versions of Word and Skype, respectively; OneNote allows you to create lists, capture items, and send information to others, while Lync is a business collaboration tool that includes video as well.

Will the radial menu replace Office's Ribbon? Almost certainly not, as there are only so many directional options that the interface allows for. But it might be a unifying element that pushes Office ahead.

Office still seems somewhat caught between its legacy interface and the new Metro or Windows UI; Fast Company's Austin Carr has blogged about the discrepancies before, making the point that he finds it unlikely that data-driven programs like Excel will be more efficient on a mobile device; 'don't expect Goldman Sachs to start forcing its M&A bankers to learn pivot tables on a Samsung tablet anytime soon,' he writes.

But, as Knowlton notes, users have a variety of different ways of interacting with Office content, including touch and the traditional keyboard. OneNote's radial menu might not necessarily be the right direction, but recall that previous versions of Office have lionized the Ribbon interface, for example. And -- this might have played a role -- both Google and Apple were issued patents for radial menus in late July and August, respectively, just days after Microsoft publicly revealed its Office plans.

Microsoft hasn't said how broadly the radial menu will be adopted. And a pessimist might wonder at the combination of interfaces within Windows 8: the horizontal swiping found within the Metro environment, the more traditional menu-driven desktop mode, and the MiniBar and radial menus that Microsoft has adopted within its apps. Still, there's no question that the radial menu feels fresh, as Windows 8 itself does. Is the Radial menu a trial balloon, or the way forward? It may be the latter.

Minggu, 28 Oktober 2012

Yup, Jailbreaking Your iPad Really Is Illegal

Want to play old school Nintendo games on your iPad? Download Google Play apps from foreign countries to your Galaxy Tab? If so, you'll have to break the law. That's because under new rules issued by the U.S. government, jailbreaking (or in the case of Android, rooting) tablets becomes a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act on Sunday, October 28.

On Thursday, the Librarian of Congress issued its latest set of exemptions to the DMCA. By default, digital rights management (DRM) mechanisms cannot legally be flouted by consumers, but the DMCA allows the government to periodically define exemptions to this rule.

In 2010, tinker-happy iPhone owners breathed a sigh of relief (and Steve Jobs likely just sighed) when it was ruled that jailbreaking smartphones was perfectly legal under the DMCA. This remains the case, but the updated list of exemptions explicitly excludes tablets, a category of devices that the government found to be too "broad and ill-defined" to allow their owners free reign when using them. So as of now, it is illegal to jailbreak an iPad or root a tablet running Android or any tablet-focused flavor of Windows.

This Makes No Sense

The tablet exemption is a bit of a head scratcher. I'm free to jailbreak my iPhone and do as I please with it, but if I want to run the same jailbreak tool on a larger device running the same exact operating system, it's against the law?

Accessing Cydia on my iPhone 4 is cool, but doing it on a screen a few inches bigger? That's illegal. Other than its size, the only significant difference between these two devices is that the iPhone makes and receives calls.

The new rules also forbid personal copying of DVDs. And starting in January 2013, it will be illegal to unlock new smartphones for the purpose of switching carriers. Unlocking older handsets will continue to be fine. The whole thing illustrates what Ars Technica's Timothy B. Lee calls "the fundamentally arbitrary nature of the DMCA's exemption process."

Explains Lee:

In order to convince the Librarian to allow DVD ripping in order to watch it on an iPad, a court would first need to rule that doing so falls under copyright's fair use defense. To get such a ruling, someone would have to rip a DVD (or sell a DVD-ripping tool), get sued in court, and then convince a judge that DVD ripping is fair use. But in such a case, the courts would probably never reach the fair use question, because - absent an exemption from the Librarian of Congress- circumvention is illegal whether or not the underlying use of the work would be a fair use.

Lee goes on to make the case that new rules surrounding DVD copying and eBook DRM don't make sense either and suggests that perhaps DRM schemes should not be legally protected from tampering by default. His take is well worth a read.

How Will This Impact iOS Jailbreaking?

When the news broke, iOS jailbreak developer MuscleNerd expressed concern about it on Twitter. When I asked him for his perspective, he declined to comment because of potential legal repercussions.

Unlocking is no longer an explicit DMCA exemption :( Neither is jailbreaking iPads (important: no exemption != illegal) is.gd/vkAVQK
' MuscleNerd (@MuscleNerd) October 25, 2012

Suffice it to say that developers like him are less than thrilled about the new rules. It may cause them to be more be cautious about building new jailbreak tools for iOS. Tools like Absinthe and Redsn0w will continue to be able jailbreak iPhones, but may include some fine print about using them to to crack open iPads, if that functionality is available at all.

Developers have not yet created an untethered jailbreak for iOS 6, but one is understood to be in the works. We'll see if these new rules have any impact on what the jailbreak community comes up with.

Weekly Wrap-Up: The New ReadWrite, Apple's iPad Mini, And Better Ways To Measure Social Media Influence

The New ReadWrite, Apple's iPad Mini, and Better Ways To Measure Social Media Influence. All of this and more in the ReadWrite Weekly Wrap-up.

After the jump you'll find more of this week's top news stories on some of the key topics that are shaping the Web - Location, App Stores and Real-Time Web - plus highlights from some of our most popular. Read on for more.

Editor's Note: Welcome To The New ReadWrite

Dan Lyons is the editor in chief of the new ReadWrite. If you're one of ReadWriteWeb's devoted long-time readers, please know that we remain committed to delivering the kind of smart, thoughtful analysis that you've come to expect from the site since its inception in 2003. We hope to build on that legacy and add to it, Editor's Note: Welcome To The New ReadWrite.

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Sabtu, 27 Oktober 2012

Tim Cook: About That iPad Number'

The weak spot on Apple's September quarterly earnings report was the iPad sales number: 14 million shipments, down from 17 million in the June quarter.

That's almost three times as many as the number of Macs Apple shipped during the quarter, but it reflects only 26% growth from last year and 18% fewer iPads than the June quarter. Hardly a growth rate to be ecstatic about when the bold prediction is that the iPad/tablet industry will grow to zoom past the PC industry.

Tim Cook's comments on Apple's earnings call should soften the blow a little.

He said:

The drop in iPad sales (to people) from the June quarter wasn't as big as the reported drop in iPad shipments (to the sales channel). This is because iPad channel inventory had grown by 1.2 million units in the June quarter, so the September quarter didn't have that same boost.
This also affected year-over-year shipment growth, as the year-ago quarter was also uncharacteristically strong. It, too, included channel inventory build.
So: iPad sales to people, or 'sell-through,' actually increased 44% year-over-year, vs. the 26% in reported 'sell-in,' or shipments.
14 million shipments actually 'exceeded' what Apple had anticipated. Apple expected a seasonal decline in September quarter iPad shipments vs. June quarter iPad shipments. OK.
One reason Apple expected a sequential, seasonal decline: Because K-12 sales taper off after the June quarter, while higher-ed sales pick up in the September quarter. And higher-ed customers are still buying notebook PCs for the most part. (Mac laptop sales grew 9% year-over-year and grew 31% from the June quarter.) I don't know how large edu-related sales are for either the iPad or Mac businesses, but this sounds plausible.
People also delayed iPad purchases because of new product rumors.

Fair enough. One quarter isn't a reason to get worried about the iPad, anyway.

But two big questions remain:

How big is the iPad market really going to get? Is this something everyone's going to have, or a luxury gadget?
How will the iPad mini affect the overall iPad business? Especially if there are severe shortages during the holidays.

See you again to go over this in January.

The Evolution Of The Smartphone [Infographic]

This is an interesting walk through the history of the smartphone from HTC's perspective. It points out key products, moments and announcements from the companies that pioneered the mobile computer. As the timeline enters the age of ubiquitous mobility, it brings in key stats about mobile usage in terms of data, time, and people. There are also some kind-of-funny jokes.

Feds: Man Claiming 50% Ownership Of Facebook Forged, Hid Documents

On Friday, Federal investigators arrested Paul Ceglia, 39, of Wellsville, N.Y. on charges that included fabricating and destroying evidence. The charges were included in a 13-page complaint filed in federal district court in Manhattan.

The arrest appears to signal that federal investigators support Zuckerberg's account of his work-for-hire agreement with Ceglia and seemingly ends the bizarre legal sideshow that has dogged Facebook during its meteoric rise.

Facebook Seems Pleased

"We commend the United States Attorney for charging Ceglia with federal crimes in connection with his fraudulent lawsuit against Facebook,' said Orin Snyder a partner Gibson Dunn and the attorney representing Facebook and Zuckerberg in the lawsuit. 'Ceglia used the federal court system to perpetuate his fraud and will now be held accountable for his criminal scheme."

If convicted, Ceglia could face up to 40 years in prison.

Doctored Documents

Ceglia "doctored, fabricated, and destroyed evidence to support his false claim," according to a statement from the U.S. attorney's office in New York City. Investigators also found a copy of the original contract between Zuckerberg and Ceglia which makes no reference to Facebook, according to the complaint.

Ceglia did contract Zuckerberg to programming work for the website StreetFax.com in 2003. In an April 2011 lawsuit Ceglia claimed Zuckerberg promised him a 50% stake in what would eventually become Facebook. Now, however, Ceglia's claims are unraveling: federal investigators said Zuckerberg did not come up with the idea for Facebook until months after he worked for Ceglia and that he never received the bogus emails Ceglia cited in his lawsuit as proof of Zuckerberg's promise.

U.S. Postal Inspectors verified Zuckerberg's account that he had not received the emails by checking email servers at Harvard University, where Zuckerberg was a student and would take on work-for-hire programming jobs like the one he did for Ceglia.

An attorney for Ceglia could not be reached for comment Friday evening.

We'll update this post when we hear back from Ceglia or his lawyer.

Jumat, 26 Oktober 2012

High-End iMacs + Cheap iPads = Trouble For PCs In Between

It's a pretty well-known fact that Apple's desktop computers cost more than the average computer, and the latest numbers reflect that. PCs are far easier to buy than iMacs, but there's a good reason why Apple isn't compromising on price and performance in the consumer market. Thanks to the iPad, it doesn't have to.

After starting out nearly equal in pricing beginning in the 1990s, the average cost of all desktop PCs on the market is now just 39.5% of the cost of entry-level Apple desktop PCs. That marked difference in pricing looks bad for Apple, but it could actually be bad news for PC makers.

iMacs Define The High End Of The PC Market

The difference in price points is rather stark. According to market analysis firm NPD, the average PC cost $513 in 2012. That's $786 less than the price of the entry-level New iMac introduced this week. Even more telling, when the first clamshell iMac was introduced in 1998, the cost of the average PC and the iMacs were nearly identical. At the end of 1998, the average cost for PCs was $1,296, and the then-new iMac debuted at $1,299. So even adjusting for inflation, that's still equal pricing in 2012 dollars.

But by the middle of the first decade of the 21st Century, things were very different. In 2006, the average PC price was $726, with the new Intel iMacs still clocking in at $1,299. If you figure that in 2012 terms, PCs averaged $833.70 while the iMac was priced at $1,491.06.

The chart below, which shows the price points in real (2012) dollars, displays the disparity very clearly: While the real cost of Apple desktops has come down, the rate of decrease has not been anywhere near as great as the decline of a PCs' average cost.

IMacs vs. Average PC Prices, 1998-2012 (2012 Dollars)

Some notable caveats: Clearly, this chart compares higher-performance Apple machines to a market replete with just-barely-cranking-along PCs. The chart does not address whether buyers get what they pay for, or take into account the vast improvements in computer technology since 1998. Comparing iMacs to equivalently equipped PCs would likely tell a very different story. The only thing being compared here is computing devices. Specifically, how much does it cost for someone to get their hands on an Apple machine versus a PC?

Based on this criteria, it appears that Apple's desktop is going to be a reach for many people, especially budget conscious shoppers just looking for a decent computer.

In fact, figuring the median inflation-adjusted household incomes since 1998, you can determine how much of a reach. In 1988, buying a Mac or a PC would represent 3.44% of the U.S. average gross income ($53,582). Today, getting a PC dings only 1.02% of the $50,054 2011 average salary (the latest available figure). Buy one of those iMacs, though, and the average U.S. household gets hit for 2.60% of its gross income.

Apple's Deliberate Two-Pronged Pricing Strategy

Rather than use these numbers to knock Apple for charging too much or abandoning the average user, I believe they help explain what the company is doing with its iPad tablet line. Throughout all four generations of the iPad (not counting the iPad mini), the cost for a new entry-level device has stayed flat at $499 (now even less for an iPad Mini). In 2012 dollars, that means the real price has fallen from $529.78 in 2010 to $499 today - all price points well under the average for a PC.

Granted, a tablet is not a PC. But given the device's use cases for many average users - Web surfing, social media, email, games, etc. - for many people Apple's tablets can do the job of a PC at a price point more easily attainable by the average buyer. While you could make the case that Apple is pricing its tablets too high, compared to the broader computing sector, the iPad's relatively low price may be the reason why Apple isn't working too hard to bring down the cost of its desktop line, as seen in the next chart.

iMac, average PC, and iPad costs, 1998-2012 (2012 dollars)

The tablet, Apple could be reasoning, will satisfy the needs of most users, while the more powerful (and pricey) desktop and notebook models will cater to those users with the professional need or personal wherewithal to afford them.

For commodity PC manufacturers, Apple's two-pronged approach bodes ill. In the past, they could market against Apple being too expensive. But now there's a decent alternative that's even cheaper, cooler, and way more portable.

How will PC makers pivot to respond to Apple's high-low threat? Thus far, the idea seems to have been to keep making cheaper, more powerful PCs and smaller laptops and try to own the middle ground. There have been few credible efforts at a Windows-based tablet - the one viable offering is from Microsoft itself. Perhaps CEO Steve Ballmer understands what the company's manufacturing partners seeming don't: that shooting for the middle of the market is all well and good - until you start to get squeezed.

Title image courtesy of Apple.

Google Video Promotes Gay Marriage - What About Other Tech Giants?

Not so long ago, coming out in favor of gay rights would have been a corporate kamikaze mission. It's almost surreal that now one of the most influential companies in the U.S. not only privately cultivates a climate of acceptance and diversity but publicly advocates for social justice as well. Google might not always live up to its now-retired Don't Be Evil promise, but the company remains a pioneer when it comes to leveraging its high profile status for the kind of visibility that effects social change.

In a new video posted to YouTube, some of Google's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) employees make a moving case for voting in support of marriage equality in four states on the November 6 general election. In Maine, Maryland and Washington state, legislation legalizing same-sex marriage is up for the vote, while in Minnesota, same-sex marriage faces a state-wide ban unless voted down.

Gayglers In Their Element

Google's track record on issues of gay rights and LGBTQ equality is exemplary, even among like-minded progressive corporate peers. Like new Googlers ("Nooglers"), gay Googlers even have their own cutesy company nickname: "Gayglers." In July 2012, the company launched its Legalise Love campaign, a global initiative to cement its non-discrimination policies and "ensure that all of our employees have the same inclusive experience outside of the office as they do at work" - even in countries like Singapore, where consenting sexual acts between same-sex partners remain punishable by law. "At Google, we encourage people to bring their whole selves to work," Google writes on its diversity sub-page. "In our more than 70 offices around the world, we're committed to cultivating a work environment where Googlers can be themselves and thrive."

The new video isn't the first from the company. The company was quick to release a video in Dan Savage's iconic It Gets Better series, a social justice campaign that sprung out of a dark few months in late 2010 when a rash of suicides among gay teens made headlines.

Apple's Stealth Record On LGBTQ Issues

But what about other companies? Apple, true to form, keeps a low profile. The successor to Steve Jobs - and the helm of the world's most valuable company - is gay, but you might not know it, unless you, well, knew. Tim Cook doesn't take up the mantle of LGBTQ visibility often, and most of Apple's gay imbroglios have revolved around iOS squabbles. In 2011, the company yanked a "gay cure" app from its software stable and iOS 6 added "gay" emoji - tiny icons depicting same sex love (your mileage may vary). Apple, along with Facebook and many other big names in tech, released its own warm and fuzzy It Gets Better video too.

To Microsoft, Social Justice Is Old Hat

Microsoft may no longer be paving the way in the tech world, but the company's precocious record on LGBTQ equality is historically pretty impressive. According to GLEAM, Microsoft's own organization for its gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender employees founded in 1993, the company was among the world's first to extend benefits to same-sex domestic partners and to add a non-discrimination clause for sexuality into its coporate policy. More recently, Microsoft went on record to advocate for marriage equality in its own backyard concerning Washington's marriage equality lesgislation, SB 6239 and HB 2516:

"As other states recognize marriage equality, Washington's employers are at a disadvantage if we cannot offer a similar, inclusive environment to our talented employees, our top recruits and their families. Despite progress made in recent years with domestic partnership rights, same-sex couples in Washington still hold a different status from their neighbors. Marriage equality in Washington would put employers here on an equal footing with employers in the six other states that already recognize the committed relationships of same-sex couples... This in turn will help us continue to compete for talent."

Remarkably, when it comes to the 2012 presidential race, the gay marriage issue has harly registered. But technology's major players aren't giving it the hot potato treatment. Whether it's to cultivate an ecosystem of diversity or to stay competetive in tech's cutthroat talent headhunt, it's fitting that the companies we rely on to peer deep into the future of innovation have their eyes to the horizon when it comes to social justice too.

Pride flag photo by Shutterstock.

Hackers Make Waves At The First-Ever App.net Hackathon

Twitter, with its vague, airy blog posts masking stern new rules, is chasing away many third-party developers. Here's what a social tech company that loves its developers looks like: The first ever App.net Hackathon was held the weekend of October 20, and a bunch of independent programmers used the event to transform the service overnight.

'I was really excited to meet all of these folks in person,' said App.net founder Dalton Caldwell. 'I knew probably 80% of the people there by their username. Getting the chance to meet people that you have interacted with online is always fun.'

Some of the hackathon projects helped flesh out the core features of App.net:

Abraham Williams created an App.net follow button for websites that uses only a single line of code.
Ketan Majmudar and Andrew Schmidt worked on an app called Pigeonhole, which tags and stars App.net posts so you can organize and find them later.
Chad Etzel, who also develops the iOS App.net client Adian, built a service called ADN Blogs, which turns App.net posts into full-length blog posts, sharing a link and headline on App.net.
Tony Million added an Explore feature to his excellent iPhone App.net client, Rivr, which uses the geolocation built into App.net, so users can see where posts come from on a map.

Apparchy In The U.S.A.

One developer, Steve Streza, whose day job is building Pocket, build something downright subversive that I love. It's called apparchy. It lets you break open the official Twitter clients for iPhone and iPad and use them for App.net instead.

'The reason I made this is because, well, I could,' Streza explained. Twitter's service can be swapped out for other domains in order to allow proxy access in places where Twitter is blocked, such as repressive countries. 'But by putting a server in there which caught requests, made calls to the app.net API, and rewriting them as if they were from the Twitter API, [apparchy] fools the app into thinking that it's getting tweets from Twitter.'

I think this hack is delightful. Twitter used to be a developer's playground, and third-party inventions made the service a global phenomenon. Now it's cracking down. Enterprising developers like these, who used to build on Twitter, have turned to App.net, which is built to motivate developers to build great apps. Streza's apparchy embodies that hacker spirit just for the pure joy of it.

App.net co-founders Bryan Berg and Dalton Caldwell

A Great Start

'Most hackathons I've attended in SF have a noticeable percentage of attendees that are there exclusively to headhunt technical cofounders or network for investor connections,' says Abraham Williams, who built the website follow button and worked on other such widgets. 'Everyone at the ADN hackathon was there because they were personally passionate about the platform or the space. While number of people with alternative motives will increase with the popularity of ADN, last weekends experience was at least temporarily refreshing.'

'The vibe was friendly and collaborative,' App.net's Ben Friedland said. 'It was less a hackathon (in terms of competition) and more a weekend working group, powered by soda and BBQ.'

'The vibe was especially cool because of how many people are not local to SF,' added Caldwell. 'I would guess at least 20% of the people there live in a foreign country, not to mention the folks that don't live in the Bay Area but came to town specifically for it.'

In keeping with the experimental spirit he and I discussed on video in September, Caldwell 'was interested to see the scope and ideas of projects expand to different sorts of use cases. For instance, the group video watching app [Vidcast] and the lightweight blogging service.'

To see more photos and hackathon projects, check out the App.net blog post.

Here's the video of all the presentations (warning: it's an hour long):

Video streaming by Ustream

Photos courtesy of App.net

Kamis, 25 Oktober 2012

The 4th-Generation iPad Makes Me Feel Like A Sucker

At first, I didn't think much about about the new iPads Apple launched yesterday. Sure, the iPad Mini represents an interesting push into the market for smaller, cheaper tablets, but I certainly don't need one. And the fourth-generation iPad? It's the company's least substantial tablet hardware upgrade yet, hardly an improvement over the new iPad I bought six months ago. Apple's new tablets are nice, but their arrival didn't have an impact on me.

Then I got a text from my brother.

"Want to split a third generation iPad for Mom for Christmas? Only $379 refurbed." Hey, that's a pretty good deal! Only $379 for a new, 10-inch iPad with a Retina display, nice camera and everything. Just like the one I bought a few months... Hey, wait a minute. Dammit it, Apple!

Online TV Has Come A Long Way

We've come a long way. But as radically as mobile devices are changinged our relationship with media, the experience still has a long way to go before it matches the power and convenience of plain old TV.

In 2008, I had a presidential-debate-watching party at my house. As somebody who has never seen the appeal of shelling out hundreds of dollars to a giant corporation for content in which I'm mostly disinterested, I needed a way to get the debate onto my HDTV without subscribing to cable or fidgeting with rabbit ears. Fortunately, CNN.com was streaming the debates between John McCain and Barack Obama for free. I hooked up my MacBook to the back of my TV, fired up CNN.com and got as close as I could to full-screening the video player. The picture wasn't great, but it worked.

This year, the debate live-streaming options were practically limitless. YouTube, Hulu, PBS, Al Jazeera, Huffington Post, CNN and a list of networks and cable channels all offered their own streams, some of them with interactive, social media-fueled components and other bells and whistles. Most of these streams were geared toward desktop browsers, but plenty of outlets crafted their debate-night strategies with our second and third screens in mind. Apple has sold 100 million iPads and competing tablets are popping up constantly. The markets for smart TVs and streaming set top boxes is maturing more slowly, but technologies like Apple's AirPlay and Google TV's equivalent hint at an interesting future. It's amazing how much TV has evolved in the last four years.

Mobile TV Still Has A Long Way To Go

Still, as I learned when I sat down to stream the third debate earlier this week, the experience remains far behind the old-fashioned way of watching things on screens.

Armed with my iPad and an Apple TV, I sat down on my couch to watch Barack Obama and Mitt Romney argue about foreign policy. At first, it felt flawless. I just AirPlayed my tablet to the TV, launched the CNN iPad app and started watching.

But the good times didn't last. A few minutes in, the stream went black.

I checked Twitter and I wasn't the only one. Others were complaining about issues with CNN's lifestream, and @CNNMobile tweeted at me and confirmed that they were having issues with mobile streaming. I switched to the Al Jazeera app, but couldn't get the audio to play (which some people say is the best way to watch a presidential debate). I checked Hulu and the Huffington Post on the iPad, both of which were streaming the debate on their websites, but neither app had a readily-tappable link to the lifestream.

At this point, I could have searched the App Store for another news app that was likely to be streaming the debate. But I wasn't about to start hunting for apps, only able to make educated guesses about who would be streaming to the iPad and then waiting for downloads. The fragile magic of democracy was unfolding in real-time on television screens everywhere and I wasn't going to miss another minute!

Finally, I turned to the browser. NBC was live-streaming the debate on the Web in what was thankfully an iPad-friendly format. I full-screened it, leaned back and watched.

Ultimately, the Web came through and worked like a charm. And if I had lined up a stronger arsenal of apps (or owned an XBox 360, or AirPlayed my MacBook to the TV, or used the WSJ Live app on Apple TV, etc.), I might have been able to avoid the hiccups.

Still, I couldn't help but picture my mother. What would she do if she were in my position?

People in the technology industry might be accustomed to hunting for lifestreams to tune into a live television event. My mother? She sees no reason to fiddle with such nonsense. With traditional TV, you just sit down, turn it on and watch. Internet TV doesn't yet come close to matching that unquestioned ease of use.

So what will watching the debates look like in 2016, when Mitt Romney is debating Joe Biden? Who knows, but given the progress in the last four years, streaming the debates to the Web and mobile devices should be smooth as butter, but getting it to work on your Google Glasses might have a few hiccups.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock.

Fasten Your Seatbelt, It's Windows 8 Day

Today will be one of the most important days in Microsoft's nearly 40-year history. The company that ruled the PC era rolls out a long-awaited new version of its flagship operating system that could determine whether Microsoft can regain its standing in the computer industry and carve out a place for itself in the post-PC era.

Windows 8 is not just another OS update. It's a radical overhaul of the world's most widely-used operating system, with a new user interface that some people find sexy and forward-looking - and others find incredibly annoying.

This is a huge and risky bet. If Windows 8 succeeds, Microsoft will be seen as a daring leader and innovator. If it's a flop - well, after a decade of drifting and missing out on new markets, Microsoft can't really afford any more flops.

No wonder then that Microsoft is pulling out all the stops, with a splashy event in New York and a global ad blitz that will cover more than 40 countries at a cost of $1 billion, by some estimates.

You can watch a live stream of today's keynote at 11:15 EDT on the Microsoft website. And we'll be covering the event throughout the day here on ReadWrite.

Is This Vista 2.0?

I've used Windows 8, and liked it well enough, though I can't say it convinced me to switch away from my Mac. Then again, Mac users like me aren't Microsoft's target audience.

The people Microsoft really needs to please are the millions millions of PC users in busindsses and homes around the world. And that's the scary part, because Windows is really different from Windows 7 (much less the still widely used Windows XP), and the kind of people who use Windows are not usually the kind of people who enjoy change.

The biggest difference - and it's a huge one - is a colorful tile-based user interface that used to be called Metro but now, suddenly, at the last minute, is just called "the Windows 8 style."

Some people are going to love it, but even more are going to find it confusing. The first time I looked at Windows 8 I could already hear the sound of thousands of baffled Windows veterans leaning over their laptops, swiping at their screens and shouting.

It's so different that Samsung has actually created a program that replicates the old Start button to make it more familiar to people. That's nice and all, but when you spend years designing a shiny new operating system, and your hardware partners start crafting workarounds to it before it even ships, well, that's not a good sign.

Mnay consumers will have no choice but to accept Windows 8 since new PCs will come with Windows 8 pre-loaded. The guys at Geek Squad must be drooling over this.

Big corporate customers are a different story. What CIO in his or her right mind would rush to roll out Windows 8 across thousands of people? Gartner predicts 90% of enterprises will stay away from Windows 8 through 2015.

Corporate Customers

No doubt Microsoft will have some corporate customers on hand tomorrow, standing up on stage and talking about how excited they are that Microsoft is paying them to take arrows in the back - I mean, to be early adopters of this bold new operating system that offers so many compelling new features.

Truth is, any company rolling out Windows 8 will have to endure all of the usual migration headaches - bugs, patches, glitches, apps breaking - but on top of that will get hit with a tidal wave of incoming support calls from baffled users asking, "Hey, where's the Start button?"

So in addition to the huge bill software from Microsoft, you'll need to dish out millions more for training and extra tech support to move to Windows 8 Why bother, when Windows 7 works great?

Microsoft claims Windows 8 is super stable, thanks in part to the 16 million people who have been hammering away at the pre-release version for months now. Nevertheless, history tells us that the first version of any big Microsoft product is usually a nightmare. The rule of thumb has been that Microsoft needs three cranks of the wheel to work out the kinks.

In the case of Vista and Windows 7, they got it right on the second try, and that, for Microsoft, was almost a miracle.

So let's imagine Windows 8 ends up having some issues but that Windows 9 gets everything straightened out. Based on the tempo of past releases - Vista in January 2007, Windows 7 in July 2009, Windows 8 in October 2012 --we won't see Windows 9 until 2015.

Can Microsoft hang on that long? Certainly. This is a wildly profitable company doing $80 billion a year in revenues. Microsoft isn't going away anytime soon.

What Really Matters Is Mobile

The real question is whether it can remain relevant. Yes, Microsoft dominates the PC market, but (a) PCs don't matter anymore, and (b) even there, Apple has been gaining market share in recent years.

In mobile, the only market that really matters, Apple and Google dominate and Microsoft is so far behind as to be almost negligible.

One product that's supposed to turn that around is the new Surface device that Microsoft is also showing off today. It's a kind of tablet-laptop hybrid that runs a different version of Windows 8 called Windows RT. Unfortunately it has been getting pretty tepid reviews, with consensus being that the software is still half-baked.

The same complaint was made about Windows Phone 7, the last version of Microsoft's smartphone operating system. Windows Phone 8 will be better, but, sad to say, it's not generating a lot of excitement either.

Not so very long ago Microsoft was so powerful and so dominant that everyone in the industry lived in fear of the team from Redmond. Over the past 10 years it has fallen so far, so fast, that you almost feel bad for the people working there. Today is the day when they can start to turn things around. Stay tuned.

Rabu, 24 Oktober 2012

Why Evernote Just Doesn't Work For Me

For some inexplicable reason, I have never been able to really truly integrate Evernote into my daily work environment. And it's not for lack of trying. Many of my colleagues recommend it, and since they are in the business of writing content for the Interwebs, what's good for them should be good for me, right?

Yet every time I try Evernote, it never seems to be quite all there for me. Even as a Premium user, which I am, at the urging of my colleagues.

Researching the Problem

Take research, for instance. I know that as I move around from site to site on the Internet, looking for material to source for an article, I can easily assign sites to individual notebooks in Evernote so I can come back to them later. The problem is, unless I am working on a really big story, "later" is usually "now," and I have all the tabs in my browser nicely open for me to reference.

I would like to be able to stick websites into Evernote's notebooks in "blue sky" mode, which is when I am just surfing around and might happen to catch my eye on something that I might want to come back to later. Except Evernote's integration in iOS Safari doesn't work half the time, which is too bad because iPad time (unlike computer time) is usually great for blue sky meandering. (Evernote does work very well on my Android browser, but honestly, I don't use my phone to surf around aimlessly much.)

Seeing a Solution?

I got really excited when I heard about Evernote's improvements to Page Camera, and was hoping to try them out to pull my written notes into text via Evernote's optical character recognition. I take written notes copiously (I own fountain pens and Moleskines by the dozens) and writing-to-text would be awesome with a cross-platform app.

But nope, Evernote's OCR, which pretty good, only indexes snapshots for note searching. There's no magical "here's your text" feature for me to cut and paste content into a story. You can export an OCR note to an ENEX file, but when you open the thing in a text editor, it's so heavily marked up you can't get the text out easily at all.

One thing Evernote does have, however, is a pretty good Dictate feature that I have used from time to time at conferences to catch longer interviews and presentations. I really wanted the OCR capability to work, but I suppose speech-to-text could be another option. I am worried about the monthly data limits on my Evernote account, though.

All Things for All People

Part of my continued firewall for Evernote usage has little to do with the app itself. One of the many uses for Evernote could be task management. Think of something to do, and make a note for it. But in this area, I already have a very good task manager, OmniFocus. In fact, OmniFocus' integration with my OS X machine and iPad means that I can capture a lot of information as I think of it or see it on a website, dump it into my OmniFocus inbox, and then sort it into a task category/timeframe later. That capture-and-figure-it-out-later process is part of the Getting Things Done process OmniFocus is really good for, and Evernote isn't quite.

While it may be obvious that Evernote and OmniFocus are not meant to do the same things, pointing out this difference speaks to a larger point about apps like Evernote that try to be all things to all people. That simply is very hard to do, and rarely works out for the best. It would be better, I think, for Evernote to do fewer things very well than many things just okay.

That may be the biggest reason why Evernote simply hasn't worked for me.

Image Courtesy of Shutterstock

Apple's Slow But Radical Overhaul Of Education

Nobody doubts that the classroom of the future will look very different than it does today. It will, at the very least, involve fewer dead trees and be much more tapped into that globe-spanning network of knowledge we call the Internet. Learning will also be even more geographically distributed than it is today. And it's increasingly looking like tablet computers will be at the heart of the whole experience. Like it or not, Apple is leading the charge.

What Apple Showed

When Apple made its first official foray into digital textbooks earlier this year, I was skeptical. It seemed clear that iBooks 2, iBooks Author and the new "textbooks" section of the iBookstore would not revolutionize the education market anytime soon, even if the longterm potential was obvious. Tuesday, Apple shared some early results from those efforts and revealed the next phase of its overhaul of education. It's definitely onto something.

Most of the 100 million iPads sold worldwide were purchased by consumers and businesses, but a growing number of those buyers are school districts. In the last nine months, 2,500 classrooms have started using iBooks textbooks, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced. Their content now covers 80% of the core high school curriculum in the United States. It's not a bad start, but Apple has a long way to go before iBooks makes an iTunes-like impact.

The next wave of that impact won't come from iBooks 3 or the new version of iBooks Author, which are both nice, but relatively minor updates. If anything from Tuesday's event will help push digital textbook adoption forward, it's the hardware. Specifically, the iPad Mini. By offering a $329 tablet, Apple suddenly made iPad adoption notably more affordable for cash-strapped school districts. Apple also released the fourth generation 10-inch iPad, which should help drive down the price of the company's older devices as well.

Indeed, the cost of these iPad-based programs is one of their biggest logistical handicaps, especially in urban school districts. I live in Philadelphia, where the public schools are forever plagued by budget cuts. The teachers I know have to ask for donations from the community (or pay from their own pocket) just to ensure's there are enough pencils and reams of paper. Their students aren't going to see $500 tablet computers anytime soon. A $329 iPad is bit easier to swallow for educators set on bringing iOS, rather than cheaper Android or Windows tablets into the classroom. Give it a few years, and these things will be dirt cheap.

Apple's Not the Only Player, But It's Still Apple

Of course, Apple has plenty of competition, both on the hardware front and when it comes to educational content. Because of the iPad's premium price tag, some schools are experimenting with Kindle Fires and other Android-based tablets. The 7-inch Samsung Galaxy Tab, for example, is considerably cheaper than the iPad mini. One fifth grade classroom that tried deploying the Galaxy Tab found it to be effective overall, but software glitches continually interrupted the experience for students. That's something that the Apple fan boys will be quick to point out: The iPad, as they say, just works.

There's some truth to that. Compared to Android, iOS is more polished and intuitive, but what Android tablets may lack in user experience, they typically make up in more affordable hardware.

The iBookstore isn't the first place to offer digital textbooks, either. Startups like Inkling, Chegg and Kno were reimagining the textbook for a digital world long before Apple started getting serious about its role in education's future. Meanwhile, Amazon has its own e-textbook storefront and rental program and Barnes and Noble offers its own digital learning tool called Nook Study.

While the educatiuonal space is filling up, it's also relatively young. So far, Apple has made one of the most direct pushes into it. We don't see Amazon pushing the Kindle Fire as the next big thing in classrooms, for instance. Not yet, anyway.

As is often the case, Apple has a tremendous advantage by virtue of the fact that it's Apple. The iPad's dominant position in the marketplace gives it the best shot of carving out a meaningful segment of the education market, where its sights are now very deliberately set.